The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,And round the pebbly beaches far and wideI heard the first wave of the rising tideRush onward with uninterrupted sweep;A voice out of the silence of the deep,A sound mysteriously multipliedAs of a cataract from the mountain’s side,Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.So comes to us at times, from the unknownAnd inaccessible solitudes of being,The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;And inspirations, that we deem our own,Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeingOf things beyond our reason or control.

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have long been influenced by the sea, but now its proximity seems to come into my work in more subtle ways. I have always loved using shell shapes and ammonite fossils in my work, as well as abalone and repurposed pearls. With my daily visits to the sea I now find different lights and moods and even movement come into play. One instance of this is in theSea Chains earring design. The hues of deep reds and bright blue-greens echo the diversity of colours in the tide pools at New Aberdour– red, brown and grass green seaweeds mix with blue crabs and pink anemones, and all seem to flow in a meditative dance.

I designed these earrings to move and flow with the wearer, much like the seaweeds in the rock pools!